After three and a half decades, can the tradition-bound Chicago Jazz Festival evolve into something better, newer, fresher?

Can the event break with formulas of the past and prove worthy of the great jazz city whose name it bears?

At this late date, can the festival really grow?

At least one influential Chicagoan believes so, and he's in a unique position to help make it happen. The 36th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, which runs Thursday through Aug. 31, for the first time will have been planned with Chicago drummer-bandleader-impresario Mike Reed as chair of the event's programming committee.

Granted, the voluntary post confers no great powers in an event produced by the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and programmed by the nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago. But Reed brings considerable prestige, savvy and experience to the position, his work as producer of the Pitchfork Music Festival and founder of Constellation — a hot spot for new music and dance on North Western Avenue — suggesting he may be able to expand the festival's reach and step up its metabolism for change.

One hastens to add that the event underwent an important and much-belated transformation last year, when Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Michelle Boone rescued it from the shabby environs and acoustics of Grant Park and relocated it in plush Millennium Park, with its state-of-the-art Pritzker Pavilion.

Great move, but not enough. Not in a world where jazz festivals in Montreal, San Francisco, Detroit, Ottawa and elsewhere are commanding global attention for multifaceted offerings, and even music fests in Chicago are serving up a buoyant mix of outdoor shows and indoor concerts.

The goal at the Chicago Jazz Festival is "to build a national, international reputation that's well deserved," says Reed, who believes this city's free-admission event has a great deal to be proud of.

"It has not gone the way of some of the paid (admission) festivals, where they can be very pop-influenced," Reed adds. "It's not (even) influence; pretty much they're just pop festivals."

True enough, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival being one of the more egregious examples. If you've always admired the jazz artistry of Christina Aguilera, Bruce Springsteen and Public Enemy, then you'll find this event deeply rewarding. If you prefer to hear actual jazz artists, however, you'll be relegated to acoustically nightmarish environments that make Grant Park's echoing Petrillo Music Shell seem like Carnegie Hall.

The Chicago event deserves credit for having made few such detours, though a 1992 opening night that culminated with the elevator music of Spyro Gyra suggested that the programmers had suffered a startling lapse in judgment. Such exceptions notwithstanding, the best part of the festival always has been its programming, the event presenting virtually all the living legends, plus more innovators, experimenters and avant-gardists than most such soirees would dare.

But the Chicago Jazz Festival's format of featuring nearly all of the shows in the park and almost none in the city's clubs and concert halls (except for Thursday afternoon's welcome sets in the Chicago Cultural Center) seems a wasted opportunity at least, an affront to Chicago's dynamic live music scene at worst. Representatives from various venues have told me over the years that they would love to be a part of the Chicago Jazz Festival, just as they are with the city-produced World Music Festival Chicago. That event offers first-rate concerts both in the Pritzker Pavilion and an array of free events at Schubas, Old Town School of Folk Music, Northeastern Illinois University Auditorium, Mayne Stage, Martyrs', City Winery, Thalia Hall, Hideout, Constellation, National Museum of Mexican Art, Beverly Art Center and more. In effect, the World Music Festival embraces the city's far-flung music venues, while the Jazz Festival very nearly ignores them.

But Reed, an innovative musical thinker, sees no reason the Jazz Festival can't push beyond the park and into the city the festival is meant to serve.

He welcomes "the idea of moving into the future and seeing a Jazz Festival week that really does live all around the city, and with lots of venues that are all supported and promoted together, and (that) people look at as a real place to go to for a week and just enjoy the whole thing."

Moreover, incorporating events at intimate clubs and concert halls does not conflict with the Millennium Park concerts, it augments them. Take this year for example. Stars such as trumpeter Terence Blanchard, bassist Dave Holland and singer Cecile McLorin Salvant will be playing free sets at the Pritzker. Why couldn't they and others not booked at the Pritzker play ticketed shows in smaller rooms, where hard-core fans will pay money to hear their heroes in an intimate setting? Or perhaps the fest would present these shows for free, just as the World Music Festival club does annually.

Either way, audiences and profits would be directed toward the city's music industry, which otherwise loses potential customers to the free events downtown.

"Why not have another gig for a musician?" asks Reed, who points out that he speaks for himself, not for the programming committee or for city government. "The reason I do after (fest) shows for Pitchfork is because the venues that usually have these shows — Empty Bottle or Schubas — they're affected by the economy if we start booking a festival and take 45 bands out of the market. So for us to basically say, 'Here, you can have access to these bands to book shows that weekend,' helps them out, and not the other way, taking away from what potentially they could have.

"So I'm into that, because then you're basically supporting where you live."

If Pitchfork can do it, if the World Music Festival can do it, if the Hyde Park Jazz Festival can do it, the Chicago Jazz Festival surely can, not only for the benefit of venues forced to compete with city-sponsored free events but also for the good of the festival itself. In our era of niche programming, with clubs and concert halls nurturing particular segments of the listening audience, confining the festival mostly to the park diminishes its potential. Why not expand the festival with traditional jazz shows at Andy's? Experimental fare at the Museum of Contemporary Art? Eclectic music at the Old Town School of Folk Music?

Why not involve the entire city and welcome input from an array of programmers? Just imagine how much more interesting and multidimensional this festival would be if impresarios across the city presented self-selected attractions. (Though some might say that the annual Club Tour serves this purpose, this token offering provides a poor listening experience.)

Whether any of this emerges next year remains to be seen, but Reed and colleagues have started to make some moves to buoy the festival. For this year's edition, the festival engaged a national publicist to promote an event that ought to command a higher global profile. And Reed says he's eager to get the festival to pick up the tempo of its social media, encouraging fans to post photos, commentary and other input via Facebook, Instagram and other interactive sites. He also hopes to develop an online sound archive, so the music can be heard far and wide. In this way, the festival could attract followers around the world, which would benefit music and musicians in Chicago.

In the meantime, there's more that can be done to improve the festival right here on the ground. The event's most amateurish aspect remains the emcees who deliver lectures about the music. Some read aloud from the program booklet, as if the audience were incapable of doing so.

Why not give the loquacious folks who seize the microphone a break and, instead, put the focus where it belongs — on the musicians? Why not ask a different Chicago jazz artist to serve as emcee during each evening of the festival? Imagine hearing pianists Willie Pickens or Ramsey Lewis, guitarist Bobby Broom or singer Tammy McCann introducing their colleagues and enjoying a richly deserved moment in the spotlight themselves. Imagine how this would elevate the tone and stature of the proceedings.

Let's make an already smartly programmed festival into an event that can compete on the world stage.

Lollapalooza 2015 is underway in Chicago's Grant Park. Join our coverage of the three-day music festival, as Paul McCartney, Sam Smith, Metallica and Florence and the Machine headline. On the Tribune app? Click here to see the live blog.